msbuild other projects and copy output to current project

Question

Here is my code:

<ItemGroup>
    <ProjectsToBuild Include="$(ProjectDir)..\proj1.jsproj"/>
    <ProjectsToBuild Include="$(ProjectDir)..\proj2.jsproj"/>
    <!-- ... -->
  </ItemGroup>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <Config>Release</Config>
  </PropertyGroup>
  <PropertyGroup Condition="'$(Configuration)' == 'Debug'">
    <Config>Debug</Config>
  </PropertyGroup>
    <Target Name="Build">
        <MSBuild Projects="@(ProjectsToBuild)" 
          ContinueOnError ="false"
          Properties="Configuration=@(Config)">
          <Output ItemName="OutputFiles" TaskParameter="TargetOutputs"/>
        </MSBuild>
        <!-- Need to copy single generated js file in each projects to current project (ie:mainProj\autogenerated folder) -->
    </Target>

So, proj1.jsproj generates proj1.js single file, proj2.jsproj generates proj2.js single file,...

Then I need to copy those files to:

$(ProjectDir)\\autogenerated\\proj1\\proj1.js

$(ProjectDir)\\autogenerated\\proj2\\proj2.js

...

Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

This can be achieved in a number of ways, here's one which uses metadata to declare a destination directory, combines build and copy into one target and loops over the ItemGroup calling that target:

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectsToBuild Include="$(ProjectDir)..\proj1.jsproj">
    <DestDir>proj1</DestDir>
  </ProjectsToBuild>
  <ProjectsToBuild Include="$(ProjectDir)..\proj2.jsproj">
    <DestDir>proj2</DestDir>
  </ProjectsToBuild>
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Build">
  <MSBuild Projects="$(MsBuildThisFile)" Targets="BuildAndCopy"
    Properties="ProjectToBuild=%(ProjectsToBuild.Identity);
                DestDir=$(ProjectDir)\autogenerated\%(ProjectsToBuild.DestDir)" />
</Target>

<Target Name="BuildAndCopy">
  <MSBuild Projects="$(ProjectToBuild)" Targets="Build" >
    <Output ItemName="OutputFiles" TaskParameter="TargetOutputs"/>
  </MSBuild>
  <Copy SourceFiles="@(OutputFiles)" DestinationFolder="$(DestDir)"/>
</Target>

Now if your projects are really named like that and your directory structure is like that things can be simplified: the only different part for every project is the name, so you could simply use

<ItemGroup>
  <ProjectsToBuild Include="proj1">
  <ProjectsToBuild Include="proj2">
</ItemGroup>

and then derive all other paths from it.

Another way is importing a common MsBuild file in every project, and make the common file declare a postbuild event to copy $(OutputFile) to $(ProjectDir)\\autogenerated\\$(ProjectName)\\$(OutputFile) or something like that; I'm not familiar with js projects so the names might be wrong but you get the idea. This removes the need for an extra MsBuild file just to build projects.